I saw this film on MST3K, which is going to probably be the only way to find some enjoyment out of a U.S. propaganda movie from the old Cold War days. I am rather sure that even if you lived during that time though you would find little enjoyment out of this film which basically uses scare tactics to ramp up the Soviet threat to the United States. Throw in a pointless spy who infiltrates Russia and a couple of other padding devices and you still barely have enough present to call it a movie.The story has the Russians launching Sputnik and the U.S. in a panic! The United States sends in a top spy to infiltrate Russia and try to find out just how close they are to launching an attack on the United States. He falls in love with his contact in what amounts to a pointless padding plot point and fails miserably in destroying the Russian missile as he is a bit too worried about his own safety...should of made that thing go off sooner you idiot. We go back to the U.S. for a couple of really pointless plot points before the missile attack is imminent!It made for a good MST3K episode in spots; however, it was not one of the funnier episodes. It had moments where the film lagged a bit too much and there was just not enough fodder for the guys to jump on. The acting was stale and the plot slow so it did not have a lot going on which does not help the guys' riffing. It is not a bad episode either as there are area where they are giving enough material to shine!So this film is not really all that good...it is serious to the point of being droll and annoying. It is not like you cannot have fun with the subject, look at Stanly Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. It goes by at a snail's pace and the only way this film seems to be even watchable is with the MST3K gang. If they wanted to make a propaganda piece ditch most of the plot and just show New York getting hit, as generating fear is what this thing was all about. Instead they generated boredom which probably put everyone to sleep before the bomb even hit...

...but it comes close. At least it isn't too long. There are some dragged out parts, mainly in the beginning when the "agent" meets the "spy", and they focused quite a bit of time on the belly-dancer. Though, compared to the whole of the film, that is worth a watch by itself. Much of it seems to be stock footage. The funny thing is is that if the U.S. successfully launched a satellite first, the world may have reacted with certain paranoia as the U.S. did. Perhaps not on the same scale. It seems, overall to be like one of those "after school" educational programs except this one filled in fear. As I stated: it isn't the worst out there. But it's close.

This movie must be the only terrible movie to be too terrible to be panned on MST3K (which it was...). Did any of these "actors" actually paid for this trash? This makes the 1951 Invasion USA look like academy award material. Who was Barry Mahon trying to kid? How about a worst movie of all time festival with this piece of you-know-what, Monster A-Go-Go, and Manos the Hands of Fate as the headliners? The production was the cheapest, the actors the worst, the plot was stupid and contrived, the so-called facts about the Soviet Union and sputnik weren't. How about all those "foreign" accents, eh? Well Mahon may have gotten the miniscule amount of spoken Russian right as they were spoken by two real Russians (noticed them in the credits).

In 1986, SNL alumni Laraine Newman starred in a 13-installment series called "Canned Film Festival", in which she and regular customers in a phony theater snackbar setting would talk about the bad movie that was playing in that night's schedule. What the writers failed to realize was that the irritating "comic relief" offered up by this stock pile of wannabes was nowhere nearly as funny as the films they showed... that took themselves seriously!Cue ROCKET ATTACK USA. This typically lethargic Barry Mahon epic (remember CUBAN REBEL GIRLS?) is nonetheless a real scream. It is an outrageous piece of grimy slop. This is the kind of Grade Z espionage flick which heavily relies on stock footage, people reacting to offscreen cut-ins, and the principal cast "emoting" in front of those great nondescript black backgrounds. This is the kind of movie where a person gets mowed down by machine guns, and says, "You go ahead- I'm all right."I haven't seen this film since, but I would love to have another look at it. However, in light of the atrocities of September 11, no-one would dare program it. After all, it does feature rockets attacking New York City. In today's climate, pictures like this and SHACK OUT ON 101, can no longer be viewed as hilariously outdated, naive pieces of Red Scare Propaganda. Suddenly, we understand how our ancestors felt back in the 1950's... being on the verge of disaster. Who knew that a Barry Mahon film would be topical?